


of angels and angles

by 1000_directions



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dog Cops, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Haircuts, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Sandwiches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22310752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1000_directions/pseuds/1000_directions
Summary: “I don’t know if you’ve noticed," Bucky says, "but I’m a little sensitive about having things near my head.”The first and only time that Clint tried to touch his face while they were kissing, Bucky dissociated so violently that he accidentally bruised three of Clint’s ribs in a blind panic, so yeah, he's noticed.Bucky needs a haircut, and Clint is the only person he trusts to help.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 29
Kudos: 256
Collections: Mandatory Fun Day





	of angels and angles

**Author's Note:**

> written for the mandatory fun day prompt "Bucky gets a haircut"
> 
> "hurt/comfort" square for winterhawk bingo
> 
> this is in the same universe as [save your first and last chance for me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22094830) but probably works as a stand-alone story
> 
> this fic contains a few brief mentions of clint worrying that bucky will self-harm, but that does not actually happen within the story

_What do you know about haircuts?_

Clint squints down at his phone, wondering if there’s going to be a follow-up question or any additional clarification. But the text from Bucky stays the same, no elaboration.

 _Are you asking for a definition?_ Clint finally texts back. He doubts that’s what Bucky’s looking for, but it’s hard to know with him. One day, Bucky will be all the way there, smiling and laughing and thoughtful and present, and then the next, it’s like he’s only half-rendered and glitchy.

It doesn’t happen so much anymore, but it still does happen now and then. Clint’s just thankful that Bucky never gets so far gone that he forgets that Clint is who he’s supposed to reach out to for assistance. Even when it’s so bad that he doesn’t recognize his own name, Bucky always finds his way to Clint’s rooms. Nat says he’s like a baby duckling who’s imprinted on Clint. Tony says it’s like Bucky’s a machine returning to the shop for maintenance. Whatever the reason, Clint’s glad to the be the one that Bucky chose.

Bucky must be typing and deleting something, over and over. The three dots appear and disappear twice, four times, a dozen. Clint waits and doesn’t push him to respond, and eventually, a new text pops up.

_Can you come over?_

_On my way._ Clint’s already jamming his feet into his shoes as he one-handedly thumbs off the reply. They still spend more time in Clint’s rooms than Bucky’s, so if Bucky is actually inviting him over, something is either wrong enough or right enough that Clint should probably hurry up.

“JARVIS, where’s Bucky?” Clint asks as he trots down the hall towards the elevator. A little distance is probably good for them overall, everyone’s always telling them that, but right now, in this moment, Clint fucking hates being so far away.

“Bucky was standing in his bathroom at the time of your request, but now he is sitting on the couch in the main room,” JARVIS replies after a brief pause.

“Is he okay?” Clint’s security access to Bucky’s personal information is complex and nuanced and probably won’t cover a question like that, but he asks anyway.

“Bucky is not in any physical distress,” JARVIS says, and Clint figures that’s as good as he’s going to get.

Clint is allowed to ask whatever sorts of questions he wants, but JARVIS only answers them as long as Bucky approves, or if JARVIS deems him too incapacitated to make his own decisions. There are some automatic alerts, like if Bucky’s behavior is erratic, or if his blood sugar drops dangerously low, or if he goes catatonic or violent, or if he attempts to self harm. There is protocol in place for each of these incidents, and Bucky had insisted that one step be to notify Clint. And if that’s what Bucky wants, Clint can’t say no, even if sometimes it feels like Bucky is trusting him too much.

But Bucky wouldn’t have given permission if it wasn’t okay, and he can always change the protocol in the future if his comfort level changes. None of this was decided on a whim. Clint has to keep reminding himself of that.

The door to Bucky’s rooms opens automatically as Clint approaches, and he gratefully slips through. JARVIS is a good bro, and to whatever extent an artificial intelligence can have a person’s back, JARVIS has Bucky’s.

“It’s me,” he calls out as he rounds the corner, and there Bucky is, sitting on the couch with his legs folded up and his back hunched, like he’s trying to be smaller than he is, take up less space. His head is bowed, and it’s not that he looks _hurt_ , exactly, but…. When Clint saw him last night, his hair was down to his shoulders, and now it’s a ragged and uneven mess that looks, charitably, like it’s been shorn by hedge-clippers.

“I need a haircut,” Bucky says glumly, lifting his head to look at Clint.

“Looks like you already had about half of one,” Clint says gently, sinking onto the couch.

Bucky instantly leans into him, one of his hands idly stroking over Clint’s hip as their bodies slot together. Clint’s hit with a wave of relief, because whatever’s going on, at least Bucky is present and involved and not drifting somewhere. Bucky huffs out a soft breath and nuzzles into Clint’s face, bumping their noses together before finding his mouth for a few easy, light kisses that Clint happily reciprocates.

“Can you fix it?” Bucky asks when he pulls back. There is something skittish in his eyes, and Clint doesn’t know if he should ask what happened but….

“What happened, babe?” Clint asks, finding Bucky’s free hand and giving it a squeeze. “Did you do this?” Bucky flushes slightly and shifts his gaze downwards before nodding. He smiles crookedly, tentatively meeting Clint’s eyes.

“Wanted a fresh start and didn’t make it all the way there,” he says ruefully. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a little sensitive about having things near my head.”

The first and only time that Clint tried to touch his face while they were kissing, Bucky dissociated so violently that he accidentally bruised three of Clint’s ribs in a blind panic, so yeah, he's noticed, and Bucky knows that. It’s probably meant to be a dark joke, so Clint smiles at him.

“How can I help?”

“Have you ever cut hair before?” Bucky asks quietly. “I mean, it doesn’t really matter if you have or not. I’m not looking for anything fancy.”

“I’ve cut my own hair,” Clint confirms, and he’s not planning to volunteer the details, but that’s how they run into trouble, when they ignore the traumas and let them bubble up insidiously later on. So despite all his instincts, he continues. “There was a girl in the circus, maybe sixteen, seventeen years old. She was only a few years older, but she tried to look after me a bit, and she’d cut my hair for me. But then she died” -- and this, he chooses not to elaborate on -- “and I did it myself afterwards.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky murmurs, stroking his thumb over the back of Clint’s hand. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry.”

Clint nods. Now, they can both go into this knowing that there are going to be emotions and trauma associated with this act, from both of them. They can’t fix what’s been done, but now they _know_ and can prepare for the weight of it when it hits.

“You gonna let me cut your hair without beating me up?” Clint asks. It’s a serious question. He’s never even touched Bucky’s hair with his hands before.

“I’m gonna try,” Bucky says. He shrugs a shoulder. “We could, like…. I don’t know. You could restrain me.”

“Not a chance.” Broken bones will heal, and if Bucky lashes out, Clint will suffer the consequences and get over it. But he is never going to be responsible for Bucky being restrained, not ever, not after the things that Clint has seen and the horrors that he can only imagine. That’s a deeper wound than either of them can bear.

“Probably for the best,” Bucky concedes. “Okay, come on.” He smiles, but it’s starting to strain at the corners as the nerves creep back in. He uncrosses his legs and stands up, and Clint follows his lead, staying a step behind as they walk down the hallway into the bathroom.

They walk through the door, and Clint tries to keep his face neutral as he takes in the shattered mirror, the sink full of broken glass and different lengths of hacked-off hair, the utility knife on the counter. His heart is pounding in his chest like it’s trying to punch its way out, and his head is screaming as he absorbs each detail. He can’t stop himself from imagining Bucky holding that blade so close to his own head, and he wants to throw up, but he can’t.

“Do you have any scissors?” he asks, keeping his voice even.

“Don’t think so,” Bucky says.

“JARVIS, can we have some scissors?” Clint asks. He is going to do this, if it’s what Bucky wants, but he’s not doing it with a knife, not a goddamn chance.

“Certainly, Mr. Barton,” JARVIS intones. “ETA four minutes.”

“Let’s not do it in here, if that’s okay,” Clint says gently. Bucky’s eyes meet his in the mirror, amidst the spiderweb of cracks. “Maybe we can go back into the kitchen.”

Bucky nods and doesn’t say anything, just follows Clint out of the room. Clint closes the door behind them firmly, as if he can set up a physical barrier between his consciousness and what he just saw. He will go in and clean up later, but right now, he needs to compartmentalize.

“Sorry,” Bucky says into the awkward silence of their waiting. “I know you don’t…. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Clint says. He’s always telling Bucky that he doesn’t have to apologize for everything, that he has nothing to be sorry for, but sometimes it’s easier just to accept it and move on. “Are you going to be okay? We don’t have to do this right now.”

“No, I think I need to,” Bucky says. He frowns, then looks up at the ceiling, which he always does before talking to JARVIS, no matter how much they tell him that JARVIS is everywhere, not just _up_ , and he doesn’t require any eye contact no matter _where_ he is. But he looks up and asks, “JARVIS, what was the quote with the marble?”

Almost automatically, Clint remembers the heft of a marble in his hands, the smoothness of the sphere, the balance and the gloss and the weight of it, and he feels himself catapulted twenty-five years into his own past. He hasn’t thought about marbles in so long. The boy who had played with them feels so foreign to the man he is now.

“The quote you are referring to is: I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free,” JARVIS says, and Clint imagines the knife, imagines Bucky attempting to _carve_ something from himself, and he struggles not to shudder outwardly, not to let Bucky know where his thoughts are, but fuck, it could have been so, so bad. “The quote is commonly attributed to Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo, though there are no sources I am aware of that can confirm this origin.”

“Thanks, JARVIS,” Bucky says softly. He looks over at Clint, who must not be doing a great job of hiding his emotions judging by how Bucky’s face changes. “I’m not saying I’m an angel. I don’t think that.”

“It’s okay,” Clint says, but Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head violently, just twice, like he’s trying to reset a malfunctioning piece of equipment. He opens his eyes again and swallows hard, then he walks over to the kitchen and sits heavily on a stool. His toes just barely graze the floor.

“Sometimes my head is just...crowded,” he says hesitantly. “Like I’m not the only one in there. Like there’s me, whoever I am now, but there’s also like...pieces of other people. I’m not them anymore, but I used to be them, and they won’t _leave_.”

Clint takes a steady breath in, and he slowly exhales as he walks into the kitchen. He is not equipped to handle this. He just isn’t, and he hopes to God that Bucky is also discussing this at therapy and not keeping it all bottled up and only letting Clint know about it.

“The haircut,” Clint says. He has to focus on this, the part that’s within his power to change. “You were trying to carve away the parts that belong to someone who wasn’t you?”

“He _was_ me,” Bucky says very quietly. “But he’s not me anymore, and he has to go. I can’t look in the mirror anymore and see him looking back, Clint. I can’t fucking do it.”

“Okay,” Clint says. The door opens, and a robot unobtrusively enters with a pair of scissors on a tray. He picks up the scissors, and the robot retreats with a chirp. “Okay, babe. We’re gonna fix it. It’s going to be okay.”

Bucky’s eyes dart nervously back and forth between Clint’s face and the scissors, so Clint puts them on the kitchen counter and leaves his empty hands at his sides, palms slightly turned towards Bucky.

“We’ll take it slow,” Clint says, as reassuringly as he can. They’ll take it slow, but he also somehow has to be quick, because the longer they spend drawing this out, the more likely Bucky is to lose it. “Can you just put one of your hands on your head for me?”

Bucky seems confused by the request, but he does it anyway, placing his right palm lightly against his scalp. It’s a gentle contact, but he winces anyway, and Clint hates this, he _hates_ this. He hates everyone who ever hurt this kind, good man, and he hates that he can’t just fix it by caring about him enough.

“I’m going to touch your hands,” Clint says, and Bucky bites his lip and nods. “First, this one,” Clint says, slipping his hand into Bucky’s metal one and giving it a good, grounding squeeze. “Okay so far?”

“Of course,” Bucky says, his voice barely a whisper.

“And now, this one.” Clint feels himself moving almost in slow motion, like it will take an anxious eternity before his skin touches Bucky’s own. His hand wants to shake, but he won’t let it, and finally, _finally_ , his palm contacts the back of Bucky’s wrist.

Almost immediately, Bucky’s hand starts to tremor and spasm, jerking erratically under Clint’s light touch. His fingers flex frantically, and Clint’s worried he’s going to hurt himself even more than he’s worried about his own safety.

“It’s just me,” Clint says soothingly, keeping his touch feather-light. “It’s me, babe. Stay here with me.”

“I’m trying,” Bucky says, and there’s such an uncomfortable combination of resolve and terror on his face that Clint wants to call the whole thing off. “I need…. JARVIS, can you show me? I just need to see.”

Clint doesn’t know what that’s even supposed to mean, but JARVIS just says, “Certainly,” and then a projection appears on the wall in front of them, video footage of them from the front and from the back, almost like a digital mirror.

“There we are,” Clint says. Bucky’s hand is still trembling beneath his, but it’s less severe now. “Does that help?”

“I think so,” Bucky says. His breathing is too loud. Clint shouldn’t be able to hear him breathing this loud. “Clint, you just need to do it.”

And Clint knows that. He can’t stop imagining all the ways that Bucky could hurt Clint or himself, but this is a bigger problem than they are going to solve today, and Clint couldn’t possibly move slowly enough to make this a painless experience. This is going to hurt Bucky. This is going to be traumatic. But Clint can give him the mercy of making it brief.

“JARVIS, set a timer for sixty seconds,” Clint says. A digital display appears discreetly in the corner of Bucky’s mirrors. “That’s it, babe. That’s all we’re going to do, I promise.”

“Is that enough time?” Bucky asks uncertainly, as if this will actually be quick, as if every second isn’t going to be an unbearable infinity for him.

“Yes,” Clint says. He reaches for the scissors. “JARVIS, start the clock. Bucky, tell me about the time we first met.”

“You already know that story,” Bucky says, nervously tracking Clint’s movements in the mirror.

_:57_

“Tell me again.” Clint says a quick prayer to he-doesn’t-even-know-who, and then he runs his fingertips through Bucky’s hair.

“You,” Bucky squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, then opens them again, his gaze fixed on Clint’s fingers in his hair. “You were sitting on the counter in the common kitchen.”

“What was I wearing?” Clint quickly snips off the ends of the lock of hair he’s holding, letting them flutter to the ground as he moves on to the next section.

_:48_

“Purple pajamas pants,” Bucky says. His teeth chatter for a moment, then stop. “No shirt. You...you always joke that I shouldn’t have been wearing a shirt, but you actually weren’t, and you looked….”

“How did I look?” Clint tries to keep his fingers on the edges of Bucky’s hair, away from his scalp, but he knows Bucky can still feel him there as he snips away.

“Tired,” Bucky says. “You looked tired. You were drinking coffee out of the pot, and your hair was a mess.”

“I _was_ tired,” Clint says. “Captain America dragged my sleepy ass out of bed early for an unexpected meet and greet.”

_:36_

“You looked at me,” Bucky says. He looks off into the distance as he remembers, but he doesn’t drift. “You saw me.”

“And what did I do?” Clint really needs to hurry up, he’s running out of time.

“You spilled,” Bucky says, and the corners of his mouth twitch, just a little. “You poured half a pot of coffee over your chest and into your lap.”

“Excuse me for having an appropriate reaction to meeting the absolute hottest guy I’ve ever encountered in my life,” Clint mutters. It’s looking a little too long near Bucky’s ears, but Clint’s not even going to try getting in there to fix it.

_:22_

“I thought you were hot, too,” Bucky says softly. “A big hot idiot. You’re lucky you were forty minutes late to breakfast and the coffee was already cool. That could’ve been a disaster.”

“Could’ve been,” Clint agrees. He snips off the longish rattail that’s somehow appeared by Bucky’s neck, then quickly checks over the rest of Bucky’s hair, looking for any other stray stands he’s missed. “Ended up with the opposite.”

“That’s me,” Bucky says with a hollow chuckle. “The opposite of a disaster.”

“Yup,” Clint says gently as they both watch the time tick down to zero. “The opposite, babe. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says. He’s chewing on his lip, and his eyes look wet at the corners. “Fuck. Are we done? Did we do it?”

“You did it.” Clint puts the scissors down. “You let me cut your hair without breaking my ribs.”

“Fuck,” Bucky says again with a sniffle. He’s probably about to cry, but Clint isn’t going to draw any attention to it. “I hated that. I love you, but I hated that.”

“I hated it, too,” Clint says with a crooked smile. He’s trying to remember if Bucky has ever said he loved him before. He doesn’t think so, but Clint isn’t going to draw any attention to that, either. “Brush the hair off your neck, and I’ll make lunch.”

“Telling the robots to bring us sandwiches isn’t making lunch,” Bucky says, swiping his hands over his neck and discreetly beneath his wet eyes. “But I want turkey and cheese.”

Soon enough, they’re sitting on the couch watching Dog Cops while Clint munches leisurely on his second sandwich. Bucky, who ate half of his first one before needing to take a break, frowns at his metal arm and picks stray shards of glass from the seams between the plates.

“Hey,” Clint says as one episode ends, before the next begins. “So, do you like it?”

“I still don’t get it,” Bucky says, glancing at the TV, “but I don’t mind it.”

“No, not the show. Your hair. Is it what you wanted?”

“Oh,” Bucky says softly. “I didn’t even…. I don’t know. Does it look good?”

“I think so.” With all the hair gone, the soulful depth of Bucky’s eyes is even more prominent, and his face is so devastatingly angular. Clint hopes they can work on the face-touching some more, because he really, really wants to lick Bucky’s jaw one of these days. “I mean, I probably shouldn’t leave the Avengers to become a full time stylist, but your face looks good.”

“Can I see a mirror, JARVIS?”

The digital mirror appears in the air, just in front of the couch, framing the image of the two of them. There is an air of weariness to them, the exhaustion that comes of carrying around all the worst parts of their past, but they’re each smiling as they finally start to relax.

Bucky tilts his head a few ways, examining himself from different angles. His hair flops about haphazardly, but he looks nice, and Clint likes watching him watch himself.

“We look nice,” Bucky says eventually. “You and me. We look good together.”

Bucky turns his head, and Clint watches his beautiful profile as he presses a kiss to the corner of Clint’s mouth. Bucky makes a soft, contented sound, and Clint sighs happily and tilts his face towards Bucky’s.

“I found you, angel,” Clint murmurs against his lips. Bucky rolls his eyes, but Clint doesn’t care, and when Bucky kisses him again, it’s with a recklessness that has Clint’s heart soaring.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr post](https://1000-directions.tumblr.com/post/190334790129/title-of-angels-and-angles-link-ao3-pairing)


End file.
